from the cat-bloggers-of-silicon-valley dept

We hear it all the time when it comes to various social media offerings. Blogs were dismissed early on by all important people who said they "don't care about what people wearing pajamas sitting in their basement have to say about their cats." Twitter was dismissed by people who "don't care what so-and-so ate for lunch." And on and on. But what's interesting is this same sort of attitude seems to also be playing out on a larger scale, in how people look at innovation. Investor Peter Thiel is apparently complaining that Silicon Valley companies aren't doing anything really important any more. But, I think, like the complaints about Blogging, Twitter and other social media efforts (some of which Thiel invested in), he's focused too much on all the fluff and ignoring the fact that plenty of serious things are going on. However, there's almost always been random silly startups that get lots of attention (and some of them later turn into being serious, important companies). Google, Amazon and eBay were all derided as being frivolous in their early years, but all turned into something much larger.

Along those lines, Dan Lyons has perhaps his most ridiculous column to date (and that's saying a lot), in that he sets up by complaining about the same "frivolous" innovation going on in Silicon Valley, and then uses Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures as the counter-example of a company taking on the real hard problems. Uh, yeah, the real hard problems of hoarding patents, waiting for someone else to do the real work, and then shaking them down for money? Lyons, like so many others, seems to not recognize the difference between ideas and execution. What has Intellectual Ventures actually executed on. What product has it brought to market? Absolutely none. The only thing it's done to date is collect hundreds of millions of dollars from a few tech companies so that those companies can avoid getting sued, and can dig into IV's patent database to countersue those who sue them. Lyons quotes Myhrvold making the following statement:

"The old Silicon Valley was about solving really hard problems, making technical bets. But there's no real technical bet being made with Facebook or Zynga," says Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft who now runs an invention lab in Seattle. "Today almost everyone in the Valley will tell you there is too much 'me-tooism,' too much looking for a gold rush and not enough people who are looking to solve really hard problems."

Myhrvold is being misleading yet again. There's always been "me-tooism" in the Valley, and sometimes it works out, and often it doesn't. Microsoft, where Myhrvold worked for many years, was pretty damn famous for its brand of "me-tooism." And, oh yeah, it too could be dismissed in its early days for not being "about solving really hard problems." And, of course, there are plenty of tech companies out there that are working on solving hard problems, so cherry picking a few you don't like does not make for a representation of the entire industry.

"What bothers me is the zillions of wannabes who will follow along, and the expectation that every company ought to be focused on doing really short-term, easy things to achieve giant paydays. I think that's unrealistic, and it's not healthy," Myhrvold says.

So don't worry about the wannabe and followers. They've always been around Silicon Valley and the ecosystem tends to take care of them over time. Focus on building what you're building (which in Myhrvold's case, still appears to be nothing) and let the market take care of the rest. It always seems to do just fine.

from the just-saying... dept

Yes, we live in quite the litigation-happy world, but sometimes you see the type of lawsuits that just blow you away. Unfortunately, I have no link on this one, but Eric Goldman sent over the details on a recently decided case that's too fantastic not to share. Apparently, a guy named Sol Jaffe (who appears to have a history of being on the losing end of pro se lawsuits) booked a round trip from Phoenix to London via Yahoo and Travelocity. While in London, Jaffe apparently caught a cold. He also received an email from Yahoo that suggested his return flight had been canceled. After calling Yahoo and US Air, he found out that was not the case. He flew from London to Philly, where he then found out that his reservation on the connecting flight back to Phoenix was, in fact, canceled -- but US Air let him board anyway, fixing the problem.

The next day, Jaffe went to a doctor, who diagnosed him with a respiratory infection, a sinus infection and hypertension. Jaffee chose to blame and sue Yahoo, US Air and Sabre for the ailments -- saying they caused him so much stress that it turned the cold into those infections and hypertension (there's some confusion -- by pretty much everyone other than Jaffe -- why Sabre is included). Apparently, around the same time, he also (separately) sued Best Buy -- claiming that its failure to return a computer to him in a timely manner caused hypertension and cardiac problems... but that's a different case for a different time. A lower court quickly dismissed this case. Jaffe filed an amended lawsuit and eventually the court granted summary judgment to US Air and dismissed the complaints to Yahoo and Sabre -- and dismissed the whole lawsuit, with prejudice, and (eventually) told Jaffe to pay the attorneys' fees of the three companies.

Jaffe, apparently not seeing the legal writing on the wall, appealed (though, he screwed up the appeal quite a bit, as well). Defending himself, he tried to ask the court to take a more lenient view on him, since he wasn't a lawyer or a big corporation, though the court pretty quickly slapped that concept down, pointing out that you get equal treatment under the law, pro se or as a big corporate lawyer. The court then pointed out that Jaffe failed in the most basic part of his case: showing that the defendants' actions somehow caused his ailments. He did include letters from friends and doctors that he was sick, but never showed why that sickness came as a result of these actions. Furthermore, the court found it rather silly to think that the actions were in any way negligent:

He did not allege any facts that show there was an unreasonable risk of
bodily harm. Moreover, without a factual predicate, it is unreasonable to claim
that changing a flight reservation or requiring passengers to go to several
different airline counters creates a risk of bodily harm, much less a high
probability that substantial bodily harm will result.

The court then goes on to walk through all of the other claims that Jaffe made, pointing out how he failed to substantiate any of them -- including, by the way, quoting Jaffe's claim that an offer made by US Air earlier in the case had "all the merit of a rotten fritter." Believe it or not, the court did not find that argument compelling. In the end, the appeals court concurred with the lower court, trashing every argument Jaffe made, and upholding the ruling that he owes the legal fees to the three companies he sued.

So... the next time you get sick on a flight, and part of the travel experience is just slightly less satisfactory than expected, you probably shouldn't try suing everyone. You may just end up having to pay those companies' attorneys' fees, which is probably quite a bit more unpleasant than a rotten fritter.

from the about-time dept

There are an awful lot of bogus patent lawsuits out there, but even when the lawsuits are tossed out it's very, very rare for a judge to order the plaintiffs to pay the legal fees of the defendants. However, in Illinois it just happened. Joe Mullin has the story of a patent that was quite clearly limited to an infrared camera linked to a GPS system. The patent examiner required the inventor to include the word "infrared" before declaring the patent acceptable and non-obvious. Yet, that didn't stop the patent holder from suing LG, Pantech and Disney for the Disney mobile phone service that let parents track where their kids were. The product was a huge commercial failure, but those are three big companies worth suing for infringement.

However, the judge noted, sternly, that the patent holder and the law firm that was handling the case (which had also worked on the patent) clearly decided to ignore what the patent actually said about it being for infrared cameras. This practice is more common than it should be. Even when claims are written to be narrowly focused, there's always some wiggle room, and many patent holders bring lawsuits on technologies that are pretty far from what's in the claims -- usually hoping that the accused will settle rather than take the issue to court. In this case, though, the judge pointed out that it was clearly a frivolous lawsuit, and ordered the defendants get reasonable costs and attorneys' fees. If this happened more often, maybe we'd see fewer ridiculous patent lawsuits.